


Aoidos

by rikke_leonhart



Series: Episode Reaction Fics [4]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 18:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikke_leonhart/pseuds/rikke_leonhart
Summary: Post-S02E10: Closure for Alec and Magnus.





	Aoidos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jade_lil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jade_lil/gifts).



*  
In a way, Alec thinks it should feel different – that _he_ should be feeling different.

He looks at Magnus putting ingredients into an honest to God _cauldron_ and only feels desperately fond of him; he loves him. The lean lines of him, the sheer power of him, his kindness and his wit and intelligence and his good heart, that somehow, despite all Alec’s fumbling and stuttering and inexperience, loves _him_.

He thinks – he _thought_ – it would feel different now, having told Magnus that he loves him. He’s not sure in what way exactly; if he should feel older, somehow, or maybe wiser, except, he’s not sure what he should be wiser in regards to. Love? No, he still feels like a total novice, but he knows how he feels. It’s an insistent tugging at something in him, something tugging him towards Magnus.

Who loves him.

He thinks he should feel different, but he doesn’t. He feels like –

“Darling, you’re drooping,” Magnus says and sounds far away. He’s… Alec often lacks the words for all the things Magnus is. He looks as tired as Alec feels. It’s been a long day, God, it’s been such long days and nights recently, like all days and all nights just blur and mix and are impossible to pick apart, and the terror of not knowing if Magnus was dead has just drained him. He’d wanted to stay with Izzy, but Izzy had told him to go to Magnus.

Alec is getting better at doing things he wants for himself.

“Life goes on,” Magnus had said when Alec arrived, and Magnus had been in the middle of brewing a foul looking (and equally foul _smelling_ ) potion despite looking like he wanted to keel over on the nearest horizontal surface. “Even while there’s war, people still need my services. Perhaps especially then.”

All his life, Alec has been trained (indoctrinated, really) to believe that all Downworlders are selfish, greedy, vile creatures, who are slaves to their impulses and urges, but watching Magnus, who makes potions to ease pain and helps them all when they need him to, offering shelter, protection and knowledge, Alec knows that it’s wrong.

Magnus, who doesn’t turn them away no matter when they come to him in need of help. Magnus, who contains multitudes that Alec is only scratching the surface of. Alec has watched the sunrise on his skin and breathed into his collarbones, laughed into his mouth, bitten into his hip, and Magnus has shown him so much already, and Alec is greedy; he wants it all. He’s taking a lot, and he knows this, and Magnus is teaching him to give, too, in this thing where Alec is feeling _safe_ , above all.

The second time coming to sex was more difficult than the first, in some ways. Just because they’d seen each other naked, just because Magnus had seen all of Alec and hadn’t laughed, didn’t mean that it was easy. For Alec, his body is first and foremost a weapon and that anyone would find it attractive is such an awkward, foreign concept to him, adding to the fact that understanding and accepting his own wants completely is a work in progress – it’s just weird.

The sex itself is not weird – God, it keeps Alec awake sometimes, the thought of it alone is enough to awaken the heat between his legs, and when he thinks of Magnus, unashamed in his body and in his desires, he feels nothing but burning in his fingertips, itching to just touch, because he can and because he wants to and because he’s allowed. That is the true kicker of it, isn’t it, the way Alec is allowed to touch and learn and give and take with Magnus’ body. It makes his mouth run dry – it makes his mouth water.

Alec doesn’t understand all the ways his body reacts to Magnus.

Magnus can do very simple things and it feels like fondness and affection just explodes in the hollows of his ribcage, taking up all the space he hadn’t known until then what was for. It’s so obvious now, like, _oh, of course, that’s where you fit_.

Alec hadn’t known how to ask.

“Darling?”

Magnus had very carefully, after Alec’s terrible and unsubtle ways all night, laid him back on the couch and said, “I can’t read your mind, so just tell me. There’s no need for fancy words.”

Alec manages to focus. Magnus is crouching in front of him, hands on his knees, looking as tired as Alec feels. He wonders if it’ll ever stop, the terror of not knowing if Magnus lives. He looks at him now and can’t stop his heart from beating to the relieved rhythm of _thank-god_ , _thank-god_ , _thank-god_. His fingers twitch.

“Hey,” Magnus says, smile coming small and honest. “You with me now?”

“Sorry,” Alec says and his throat feels raw. “I’m okay.”

Magnus doesn’t question him, just like he hadn’t questioned the fact that Alec loved him.

Alec _loves_ him.

“I was thinking of taking a nap, if that’s okay with you,” Magnus says and Alec wants to touch the tired bruises beneath his eyes.

“ _Yes_ ,” Alec says and Magnus laughs. It’s the smallest thing, but Alec feels accomplished every time he makes Magnus laugh. “Sounds good.”

Magnus offers his hand as he stands, a fluid, graceful movement that Alec will never stop finding fascinating. It’s the elegant bend of his wrist and the swift line of his elbow, the long, strong curve of his entire body posing a question to Alec, whose body is a yes, the answer.

He’d thought it terrifying to give that kind of power to Magnus, to willingly display such vulnerability, but he knows terror now, and it’s not letting go of control with Magnus on silken sheets. It’s nothing when he’d thought Magnus dead earlier today, it’s nothing when he’d thought he wouldn’t ever get to tell Magnus he loves him.

He takes Magnus’ hand.

He folds around Magnus on the soft mattress, presses the palm of his hand flat on the curve of Magnus’ spine, pulls him close and folds him in, his other arm locking closely around his ribs. His heartbeat is steady, steady, steady against his own, and his fingers dip into the skin.

“Magnus,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t know why he said it or precisely what he wants with it, but Magnus holds him closer like he understands. You’re alive, he thinks and breathes out harshly. Thank god.

He wonders, in the spaces between breaths, when Magnus knew he loved him. Alec doesn’t know when _he_ realized, not like he can pinpoint it precisely, but it snuck up on him and culminated when he thought he wouldn’t even get the chance of saying it to him, of gifting it to him. It never even occurred to him that perhaps Magnus wouldn’t want it – all that matters now is that Magnus breathed and trembled like Alec was a gift.

His eyes sting.

Magnus _loves_ him. Somehow, he gets to have this; Magnus in his bed, Magnus, a living, breathing, stunning person in his arms, in his heart. Magnus, gloriously and wonderfully alive. Alec is sure breathing has never been this beautiful before.

He becomes aware, slowly, that Magnus is humming, very low and mostly under his breath, carding a hand through his hair, and Alec feels tension he hadn’t known he’d been carrying seep out of his body.

“There,” Magnus mumbles, his fingers gentle but firm on his scalp. Even with his awkward angles and uncertain moves, they fit. They find ways to fit, even now with Alec’s desperate, tight grip and Magnus’ mellow, languid accept, they meld together and just somehow melt into each other’s spaces and curves and sharp edges.

Magnus’ lovely shape, his generous heart, the fragility of his bones and the power of his soul; above all else, Alec knows this now for a fact:

Magnus will go to war with him.

Alec doesn’t want him to. He doesn’t want to go to war without him.

If this is what love is, he knows why he hasn’t wanted it before, but he doesn’t want to be without it again either, now that he has it in his veins. He’ll have to carve it out, sift it from his body, because he won’t let go. For better or for worse, this is his life now.

Magnus with him, in his heart, hand in hand.

Alec wants to say it so many times he loses count, and so many times Magnus will lose count, too. “I love you,” he says. He wishes he could’ve said it first when it didn’t feel like Magnus’ life was on the line, but these are not the choices one gets to make.

He can hear Magnus’ smile on his exhale. “I love you, too,” he says, steady as a fact, spoken like a promise.

The aggressive way he’s cuddling Magnus notwithstanding, he feels calmer now. It’s strange how Magnus can both calm him down and send his pulse racing.

He kisses him. Presses his mouth to whatever skin he can reach without letting go of Magnus, and Magnus – doesn’t resist, just closes his eyes and sighs into the affection, turns his face into the touches. He loves him. Magnus loves _him_.

Magnus exhales into his mouth and grips him right back – a touch that is both possessive and protective and Alec… finally comprehends.

The understanding settles on him, like a new, but comfortable blanket, something that already feels dear to him. Magnus had said he loved him, but Alec hadn’t understood – not until now, when Magnus’ touch feels heavy like a brand, like a gesture that can’t be erased, like if he could, Magnus would move the earth to have him protected.

Magnus understands, he understands the bones of love and he’s teaching Alec with a gentle hand and a patient heart.

Alec _loves_ him.

*


End file.
